Interesting when scientific data actually backs up old folk remedies like this.

I wonder if you see similar for other types of pain, or if it’s exclusive to peripheral neuropathy?

Of course their examination, while being able to tell us what it probably wasn't, didn't bring us terribly much closer to knowing what it actually was:

>Although we conclude here with no definitive interpretation of the Vindolanda phallus, we hope to have prompted the search for similar objects elsewhere and encouraged their meaningful incorporation into narratives of the past.

Even more, by a whole lot.

Maybe? Like I said, the "Formal" definition of civilization, which is a fairly specific and biased towards western style civilizations; we know virtually nothing of a civilization if it left behind no relics.

Almost any place where human lives will leave behind some traces though, even if at first they are not obvious. Things like pottery last forever; bone fragments and tools are almost ubiquitous. And of course, the hallmark of homo sapiens vs. pre-modern hominins, art. Beads, figurines, musical instruments, and drawings/carvings.

Though there do exist some cases where we have identified ancient human presence due to a lack of something being there; remains of wooden post-holes in neolithic sites at europe suggested wooden henges and large buildings. In stone-age China, we find remarkably few stone tools. It is believed that this is because they were using bamboo instead, which was easier to obtain and to work. But also left behind little in the way of evidence.

They didn't know about bacteria. But they did know "this stuff works better than this stuff to preserve" through many iterations of trial and error.

>“They… knew what substances they needed to put on the skin — antibacterial, antifungal substances — to keep the skin best possibly preserved without having any microbiological background, without even knowing about bacteria. This enormous knowledge was accumulated over centuries.”

It's hard for the human mind to conceive of just how old ancient Egypt was. Even when the pyramids were being built, Egypt was already thousands of years old. It really was one of the first "civilizations", in the formal sense of the word.

I really wish this article had more photos.

Not a lot. A couple of spearheads and a broach, as far as I know.

For those curious what the legible portion of it says, the runes spell out this (assuming phonetics consistent with the Elder Futhark it appears to be):

>I D I B E R U G

As the article speculated, it might be a name. But we don't know.

From the nice photograph at the top of the article, there is more carving on the stone, but it doesn't tell us a lot:

> I? Z B ? L A E

These letters probably don't spell out anything meaningful, at least in a literal sense. They could be intended for another purpose; they could be initials of names, they could be intended as "magical" (or have some other ritualistic/religious purpose), or they could just be complete gibberish.

I personally think the theory of it being a grave stone, naming the dead seems like the strongest explanation, as that does seem to be a name; though we cannot be certain even of that. The rest of it? We can only speculate.

But what it says on the runestone is not what makes this find most valuable; the age is the significant part. Finding an example of runic writing that far north, that early. We don't know much the development of runic writing; but this helps add to our understanding. IT most likely did develop from a north italic or etruscan script; We find some very old germanic artifacts using such scripts. But we have yet to find anything that might show us a transition from that to Futhark. previously we don't see anything that looks like north germanic runes earlier than 150; which would put this artifact right on that same cusp.

But these were not "Vikings", lets be perfectly clear. This is from 600-800 years before the beginning of the viking age. The fact that this stone has runes (albeit crudly carved) suggests that whoever carved it was, or had close ties to, the Northwest Germanic people of the age; but much much earlier than the Norse culture romanticized in stories of Vikings.

Whatever. Anything that keeps nuclear weapons out of the hands of the worlds biggest state sponsor of terrorism is a net positive to me.